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Waterfalls
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30 Aug 2015, 5:57 pm

OliveOilMom wrote:
Waterfalls wrote:
OliveOilMom wrote:
I appreciate where you are coming from MomSparky, and I didn't think about meltdowns and problems from that, but wouldn't she have mentioned it as well as the lying? She only mentioned the lying and sneaking the phone, etc. I would think that meltdowns or other problems besides the lying would be something she would bring up as well, especially if they were going on together.

I could be completely wrong, but as you know I identify with this kid here. My mom was a bit controlling and I was privacy deprived until I just learned to be really sneaky with things like a diary and such. My mother used to go through my purse every morning before I got up. She said she was "organizing" it, and making sure I had tissue. I was 15 years old, she didn't need to do that. She used to do a lot of things like that. I was rebellious and wanted to go places with friends and to school events. I did not have meltdowns from overstimulation or sleep deprivation or any of that, I was pretty stable with meltdowns then, but I would throw one hell of a temper fit when she would refuse and refuse and refuse to let me go. It was literally a mile away, at the gym. She would have taken me and picked me up. She wasn't doing anything else or going to bed. She just wouldn't. Well, my temper and attitude and rebellion and anger over her not letting me do anything at all made her take me to a child psychiatrist. I talked to the lady, and told her the truth. I told her everything and what I wanted to do, etc. I also told her about the state of our messy house and other issues at home, like my grandfather's drinking all the time and how my mother used to get mad and tell me I was going to get sick if I took a bath, etc and I had to argue and yell fight with her to just simply take a bath. (Yeah, she was eventually diagnosed borderline) Well the lady told my mother everything I told her, probably out of concern over some of the things and possibly disbelief as my mother was a well respected member of hospital adminstration at the hospital where the psych office was.

My mother hit the roof and yelled at me all the way home for telling that. She was only worried about how I "embarrassed her" but she said that luckily she had told them about my attitude and behavior so they probably wouldn't believe me and she wouldn't be too humiliated. Yes, shes said this kind of s**t to me. This was typical. Overprotective and trying to smother mother me or control my every move or I was the enemy out to humiliate her. Anyway, not too long after that she just said f**k it basically. I don't remember what I did exactly but she got fed up and just threw in the towel and I had normal freedoms and even did normal "naughty" things like sneaking out with friends (daytime, not night time and we only walked to the store for chips).

So I went with my gut on this one. We both come from different places here. You are protective for a reason and I was overprotected because my mother was batshit crazy. So my knee jerk response is very different than yours, and I guess until the OP posts again we won't really know. But I would have thought if she was having difficulties along with just the lying and sneaking the phone/game, that she would have mentioned it. She seems to be really on top of things there in an uncomfortably familiar way.

No hard feelings for me posting all this to you I hope. I just wanted to explain in a little more detail where I'm coming from. Someone saying they were overprotected as a child may or may not be true, because even as adults we don't have the same perspective our parents had back then and many times we don't have all the information they did. So I could see how you might think I was overreacting to what could have been normal and good for me, or maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember it to be. Thats why I wanted to give you a little more information on how things were, so you could understand why I'm like I am about this topic and you can hopefully see that I don't address it to attack or judge anyone, I do it out real concern that someone may be going over to the dark side where my mother ended up, even though unintentionally, and I'm not making mountains out of molehills. I'm actually probably minimalizing it to an extent and even laughing it off, because it's not like I can change the past. So I really just wanted you to know where I'm coming from so you can maybe understand better why I react the way I do.

Thanks for reading.

OOM you are describing intrusive behavior in my opinion, what you are describing does not seem to me to be overprotective behavior.



There was tons of overprotective stuff that went on all up until then. I was telling her about how my mother got in my early teens and was so controlling and didn't want me to have privacy etc, which reminded me of the things the OP said.I mentioned overprotectivness because it's a topic I've clashed with MomSparky and some others on before. I had a lot of that and it led up to this. I was illustrating how growing up, things were much different than just my mother being overprotective like I have mentioned. She was, but more.

I think the controlling was part of the overprotectivness. She wanted to monitor everything I did to make sure I didn't do anything she didn't want me to do. I was sick a lot with allergies and respiratory infections as a young child. When your kid is sick a lot you get very protective and cautious. She kept getting worse though, even though I eventually grew out of it. She treated me at 12 and 13 like she did when I was 5 or 6 and sick.

There is a lot more too it, and I could write a book about the craziness in that house when I was growing up but there isn't any need to go into it all here. I didn't focus on the overprotectivness in this post though. I'm aware of that.

Maybe I'm reading what you write more literally than you intend it, but what I'm thinking is that the OP is angry with her child for the lying and disobedience and I hope to support her finding a way to be more appropriately protective.

I don't think being protective is wrong, and I think of overprotective as not letting kids do things where there's some risk like sports or something that has benefit rather than controlling them by searching a purse, that's over controlling and intrusive but though I don't want to disrespect your mom calling herself protective, I don't I'm call that overprotective. I just don't see it that way. And how I read the OP she has lost the feeling of trust and connection to her child that is what makes raising kids special to me, where I love my kids so much I would lay down and die for them if I had to and shut my mouth when I'm scared for them to do something to cheer them on because I want them to feel proud not scared, and where when something is wrong I can try to advocate for what they need even though it just about kills me. And I carry something of them inside me and they carry something of me, but they have to be their own person. I wish for the OP to recover for herself and her child that connection where we think and feel and use all our senses to try really really hard to help our children be the best self they can grow up to be. Sorry I'm going on. I hope I've made sense. I am sorry you were not better treated, and I hope the OP can find her way toward feeling respected by her child and I believe finding inside ourself the respect and love for our child is where to start. If I've not made sense I hope someone else can rephrase because I really wanted to say this so it made sense.



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31 Aug 2015, 5:57 am

When you had to protect your child when they were younger, because they lived in a world that simply didn't understand them (I am speaking from the perspective of a mother who has 2 kids who look "normal enough" at first glance and were, therefore, frequently expected to be "normal" by almost everyone they came into contact with), it is very difficult to "unlearn" that protective behavior when they get older. But you HAVE to do it, if you ever expect your kids to gain any level of independence.

That aside, what struck me the most regarding the OPs post is her anger that her daughter was lying and daring to defy her. Moms and teenaged daughters butt heads. I think it is inevitable. Kids lie. I am actually surprised that any mother would ask if this is ASD! No! This is teenaged kids! Where would you have to live to not know that teens push the boundaries?

Instead of viewing it as a natural part of maturing and learning to act as an independent person, this mother appears to be bent on controlling it, not using it to teach independence, judgment, and more mature problem solving. Her "consequences" are not teaching her daughter to use better judgment. They don't respect her need for increasing dependence. They do not address the apparent fact that her daughter is doing these things for a purpose. It seems to me that the OP has a problem with TV watching and game playing, as if she sees them as nonproductive, perhaps not realizing they serve a purpose for her daughter.

OP, to answer your question, no, this is not autism. I think you might have better luck if you take the autism out of the equation and think of ways to improve your relationship with your daughter. She is at an age that in order for her to respect you, she is going to need to feel that you respect her. This is actually a good thing. You do not want a grown woman out in the world who does not feel that she deserves to be respected.


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31 Aug 2015, 7:42 am

OOM is apparently my sister, as we seem to have shared a mother. :lol:

My mom went through everything I owned right up until the time I left for college. She always seemed to think I was secretly on drugs or having sex, even though I was the world's biggest geek and a straight-A student. I used to spend hours out in the woods just to be alone, but she didn't like that, either. She kept telling me that a man might be out there waiting to kidnap me, because she saw that once on "Oprah". She installed a chuckwagon-style triangle on the back porch, and would ring it whenever she freaked out and needed to see that I was okay. So even in the woods I was still at her beck and call.



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31 Aug 2015, 7:57 am

Wow, I'm not even going to read the other comments, but I'd say it's you that has the problem not her. Your pissed shes up till midnight looking at cute animals when she could be out doing drugs and having sex....Have you tried beating her, maybe that will do it? Definitely no dance after being caught looking at animals....



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31 Aug 2015, 9:31 am

Again, are we really helping by shaming this Mom? Are we helping her daughter by writing her off?

I would guess that many of us had parents who didn't know they were on the spectrum or had other undiagnosed and unsupported issues - yes, I stopped keeping a diary because my mother told me it was her "right" to read it and she regularly went through my room and re-arranged it according to her OCD tendencies - plus, I was often not allowed to do social things for various minor infractions.

I'm not going to assume the OP is like my Mom, because the only information I have about her is one very short, frustrated post she made while looking for help, which is more than my mother ever did. I'd like her to get that help.

I think it is unproductive to dogpile on what we see as mistakes instead of offering tools for how to re-frame what is going on and how she might be able to do better.



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31 Aug 2015, 10:25 am

Quote:
I'm not going to assume the OP is like my Mom


For the record, I never compared the OP to my mother. I only compared my mother and OOM's mother.
And OOM didn't compare her mother to the OP, either.

I think a lot of sympathetic things are being assumed of the OP:
1) That she's concerned about meltdowns.
2) That she's concerned about school performance.
3) That she's being protective.
All I read in her post is "I'm pizzed because my daughter doesn't follow my rules. Here is how I punish her." That's it. Oh, and a lack of knowledge about autism. Anything else, negative or positive, is just conjecture.



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31 Aug 2015, 11:34 am

momsparky wrote:
Again, are we really helping by shaming this Mom? Are we helping her daughter by writing her off?

I would guess that many of us had parents who didn't know they were on the spectrum or had other undiagnosed and unsupported issues - yes, I stopped keeping a diary because my mother told me it was her "right" to read it and she regularly went through my room and re-arranged it according to her OCD tendencies - plus, I was often not allowed to do social things for various minor infractions.

I'm not going to assume the OP is like my Mom, because the only information I have about her is one very short, frustrated post she made while looking for help, which is more than my mother ever did. I'd like her to get that help.

I think it is unproductive to dogpile on what we see as mistakes instead of offering tools for how to re-frame what is going on and how she might be able to do better.


She did not appear to be looking for help. She asked only one question and asked that twice: is her daughter's ASD the cause of her tendency to lie.

The rest of the post was a list of complaints about the daughter, but did not ask for advice of any kind.
Maybe I am being to literal, but it did not seem like any kind of attempt to help, and did not seem like it was motivated by any concern for her daughter's well-being.

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31 Aug 2015, 1:36 pm

When I was a kid, It would bother me to lie, but I would do it under certain circumstances, mainly under two circumstances. The first was when I was not able to communicate something properly and I felt the lie would get me to the same place and was a simpler communication feat. The other,was when I felt a rule was ridiculously unfair, but previous attempts to lift the rule failed and there was no hope of earning the fair result.

Other than those instances, mostly my errors were to be truthful when I should not have been.

I have to say, I agree very much with what OOM said about over-protection. We don't often agree on this b/c we differ about when something is over-protective and it is not; but I absolutely agree that being overprotective can result in seeing more lying, even from kids whose natural tendency is the opposite extreme. Aspies have a very strong sense of fairness and often that will over-ride the impulse of honesty. After hitting our heads against an immovable wall, trying to do it the "right" way, sometimes even aspies will climb over it.

As far as the OP goes, I also think she was looking for an explanation more so than wanting to try different solutions. If she follows up, I guess we will find out if that is so or not. I am a big convert to the notion that sometimes initial parenting notions have to change to reflect the kid you have, and I don't know if the OP is in that space or not. Sometimes people are very resistant to that. Some change. Some don't.

OP, if you are still reading, I personally would be very careful in using a social punishment for aspies b/c even the ones who are under the radar (like I was) really do need the social practice when they can get it. I am not saying I would never take a social privilege away; but I really would make it a last resort unless it truly was the only natural consequence, or the only thing that made sense. That is a bias of mine based on my own lack of skill in this area, and the fact that my son tested less than .01 % in social skills. YMMV but I still recommend caution at the very least.



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31 Aug 2015, 1:59 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
I think a lot of sympathetic things are being assumed of the OP:

You are implying that the right thing to do is assume unsympathetic things instead, which is modeling the opposite of what we want from the OP.

YippySkippy wrote:
All I read in her post is "I'm pizzed because my daughter doesn't follow my rules. Here is how I punish her." That's it. Oh, and a lack of knowledge about autism. Anything else, negative or positive, is just conjecture.


OK, you could make a very, very literal interpretation of her post and come up with that, but if you do, you have to ask yourself why she made the post here - on wrongplanet - in the first place. If she has a lack of knowledge about autism, she has somehow sought out and found, IMO, the best possible place to be educated.

I agree that I'm working off of conjecture, but that is part of the point of back-and-forth conversation, to turn conjecture into solid information. It is also conjecture that the OP is looking only for an explanation and is not looking for help - it is very hard to tell from a single post what the OP's state of mind is, but if we assume the worst, then she and her daughter do not get the benefit of our experience.



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31 Aug 2015, 3:07 pm

Quote:
You are implying that the right thing to do is assume unsympathetic things instead, which is modeling the opposite of what we want from the OP.


No. My post was a response to comments about people assuming unsympathetic things. So, I was pointing out that the assumptions were going both ways. I don't think either type of assumption is particularly useful.
The OP apparently lost interest after her initial rant, anyway.



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31 Aug 2015, 3:34 pm

Whatever the truth of the OP's situation, I feel that I have learned interesting things (particularly in the rationally protective/overprotective part) from following this thread. So I am glad you are all contributing here.



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31 Aug 2015, 3:43 pm

momsparky wrote:
I'm a little concerned that the OP hasn't responded (which would be inconsistent with trolling.)

I have a 15 year old who was given an Ipad by the school last year, and who we nearly had to take to the hospital over constant and escalating meltdowns. We finally figured out it was sleep deprivation - unbeknownst to us, he'd been sneaking the Ipad into his bedroom at night and getting maybe one or two hours' sleep.

Maybe a little compassion for this Mom? I know what it feels like to be at your wit's end when your child is engaging in self-destructive behavior that spills out into the rest of the family. I'd agree that the school dance feels over the top, but I can understand how this may play out bigger than the post made it sound.

People tell me all the time that I'm too strict and need to let my kid "live a little," but when I do, he melts down constantly and is in a state of near-panic and all his OCD tendencies come out. He isn't able to self-monitor electronics, and although he needs some downtime, he also needs us to help him set limits. We are trying to figure out how to give him more control, but I won't do that at the expense of his safety and well-being.

We talk it through as a family and come up with the limits together, and DS agrees to them. He does, at least, have an understanding that school is somehow important and that the lack of sleep and attention are a problem. During the summer, we let him have more time, but we asked him to do other stuff, too.

With DS:

1. We finally understood that he was not able to stop himself. He was very sorry and frightened when caught. We explained the connection between his behavior, his poor grades and his lack of sleep and lack of attention to homework.

2. We bought all parental control software and locked down all the electronic devices so they turned off automatically at night. This eliminated the need to keep them somewhere "safe." In particular, we put passcodes on the YouTube app, the app store, and the browser. All games came off devices used for school or during the school day - he has games on his console, and there are games on our home computer and on our phones, but none on the computer used for school and the phone. We let him watch YouTube via the Roku on our TV so it's public (I do let him watch videos that he chooses even though they aren't what I want to watch, within reason.)

3. Rule is computer volume up all the way and no headphones for homework, and computer use happens in areas where we can hear it.

We also have lying as an issue - it is untrue that all people on the spectrum can't or don't lie. DS lies, but his disability shows in that he doesn't have the social skills to be good at it and usually gets caught.

For the lying, we've talked a lot about trust and how lying makes us feel, and we've followed mostly this system: http://www.positiveparentingsolutions.c ... ting/lying We try to assume that if he's lying, he must feel like he has no other choice, and we try to figure out what the problem really is that's driving him to keep the truth from us. In the case of the electronics, DS was afraid to admit how little control he really had - we gave him a couple of tries before we locked him out of the fun stuff, and I think he was actually relieved when we put limits on it.

FWIW, the parental controls can be hacked - we aren't using them for that reason. They offer DS a moment to think things over before he gives in to the impulse of breaking the rules on the electronics. He's actually told us the couple of times that he has figured out our passwords, or our system for creating passwords. He needs that minute.


I think you make some excellent points and very practical suggestions.

I do hope the OP is still reading so that she can see this.


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31 Aug 2015, 3:52 pm

momsparky wrote:
Again, are we really helping by shaming this Mom? Are we helping her daughter by writing her off?

I would guess that many of us had parents who didn't know they were on the spectrum or had other undiagnosed and unsupported issues - yes, I stopped keeping a diary because my mother told me it was her "right" to read it and she regularly went through my room and re-arranged it according to her OCD tendencies - plus, I was often not allowed to do social things for various minor infractions.

I'm not going to assume the OP is like my Mom, because the only information I have about her is one very short, frustrated post she made while looking for help, which is more than my mother ever did. I'd like her to get that help.

I think it is unproductive to dogpile on what we see as mistakes instead of offering tools for how to re-frame what is going on and how she might be able to do better.


I'm with you. We get nowhere by posting negative assumptions about a poster. And if we get nowhere with the parent posting, we have no chance of helping the ASD child, either. Not to say that the points should never be brought up, but there is a time and a place and a way to lead gently into them, when they do need to be made.

So sometimes it is better to bite one's tongue and try a different approach. We can't help anyone if we scare them off, and most parents get enough criticism to last a few thousand lifetimes and, therefore, pretty much turn away the moment they hear that tone.

So what if there is anger and frustration in the first post. Isn't this forum supposed to be a safe place for parents to vent? I know such posts can be hard to read, but sometimes you have to remember that people often post when they are at their most fragile, and they may see things differently a few hours later, but the post will still stand as originally written.


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11 Sep 2015, 12:40 am

From my experience, my son rarely lies, so I can't say this is an autism thing. Actually, I think most autistics are brutally honest. However, my husband lies CONSTANTLY...or so I thought. We have now figured out he has AD/HD. I know another teen who was diagnosed with both AS and AD/HD and the mother is always complaining about her lies as well. I have read a lot on AD/HD and it seems to be related to the "now" vs "before" thing, where they only see now and TRULY do not remember. I suggest you check into AD/HD to see if you are able to find more issues that might indicate this is related to AD/HD, as knowing the cause will help greatly in helping her.